Traditionally, the origination, negotiation, and conclusion of real estate transactions involved many industry participants, including but not limited to a developer, an owner, a tenant, a broker, and sector experts (or “service providers”) that assist, give expert advice, give expert opinion, or the like. Examples of service providers include but are not limited to insurance companies, financial institutions (e.g., lenders or the like), escrow companies, title companies, construction companies, advertising companies, architects, property inspectors, appraisers, attorneys, property managers, aerial photographers, property photographers, governmental entities (e.g., federal, state, county, local, city, town, or the like), governmental agencies, or the like.
Typically, each of these many participants would track transaction-related information in ways making the information accessible only through time-consuming coordination. Much of the information was accessible only with physical possession of a participant's records. For example, a real estate broker might keep a tangible file folder for a listed parcel of property, and an aerial photographer might keep an informal record of properties in labeled boxes of photographs. Accordingly, to use the information that another participant possessed, a requesting participant had to contact the other participant and make arrangements to obtain physical possession of the records for reading or photocopying. Additionally, other participants tracked information using internal computer systems solely useful for tracking information relevant to the participant. Accordingly, to use the information that another participant possessed, a requesting participant had to contact the other participant and make arrangements to obtain a printout of the records. Yet, the printouts were customized for the needs of the computer system owner and not for the needs of the requesting participant.
After obtaining a computer system printout or photocopies from a file, the requesting participant would spend further effort synthesizing the information into a useful format. For example, the photocopies and computer printouts often included data irrelevant to the requesting participant's purposes. Further, because the requesting participant often had its own particular forms and/or file system, the requesting participant would have to manually enter the relevant information from the computer system printout or the photocopies from a file. This manual entry was slow and costly. Further, as real estate transactions traditionally involved many participants, the participants would each manually enter much of the same information. This inefficient process added time and labor costs to real estate transactions.
Because gathering and synthesizing transaction-related information was so slow, participants were relectant to relinquish control of their valuable work product. Accordingly, transaction-related information was typically kept in tangible file folders, giving the participant having physical possession of the file folders control of the information. Alternatively, the participant would track transaction-related information using internal computer systems. However, although protecting the information to a certain extent, the file folder systems and the internal computer systems still required time-consuming coordination, as described above. Also, because the person possessing the file folders controlled the information, persons could disrupt a participant's business by leaving a participant's company and taking file folders with them. For example, when leaving a broker, agents might take file folders.
With each participant being a fragmented component of the real estate transaction process, it was virtually impossible to determine what information each participant needed, what information each participant lacked, and what tasks needed to be done. Accordingly, much time was lost in ensuring that the transaction was actively progressing.
Embodiments of the present invention seek to overcome some or all of these and other problems.